“You know, Ivie,” Miss McCormack concluded her long harangue with saying, “you know perfectly well I shall never pay another sixpence of your debts. I have all but beggared myself to clear you so far already, and I am perfectly certain if it hadn’t been for your disreputable ways I shouldn’t be a spinster at the present moment. Your only chance, I tell you, is to fascinate some girl (with money, of course) in her first season, and stick to her in spite of everyone and everything. You’d better make the most of your handsome face while it lasts, for I tell you plainly you are beginning to look horribly old and careworn” (here the captain glanced somewhat nervously at his own reflection in a mirror opposite), “and every season you and your ways become better known. My own belief is that you’ll end with selling out, and will finish your days as a billiard-marker in some low tavern—” She breaks off suddenly. “Do sit down, Ivie; you annoy me so tramping up and down in that style. Remember you are not in barracks. We must talk matters over, and what way is there out of the difficulty if you set your mind so obstinately against matrimony?”
The captain throws himself into a low chair and flings one long arm over the gilt back.
“What way?” he mutters. “By Jove! I’d just as soon be bullied by a wife as a sister.”
“Don’t be rude, Ivie,” Lilla rejoins. “You ought to be grateful to me for taking so much trouble. I don’t know another sister who would stand what I’ve stood for you. You never had any brains to spare, you know” (here the captain impatiently kicks over a footstool at his feet), “and if I don’t put you in the way of getting a rich wife, of course you’ll end in some disreputable manner. Now there’s Lettice Tremarten—”
Now the captain jumps to his feet.
“Look here, Lilla,” he says, “let’s understand each other. Once for all, let me tell you, whatever traps and snares I set for my own interest and yours, I’m not quite villain enough to put them just in the way of that sweet little innocent girl. We’ll drop that, please.”
Lilla merely raises her arched eyebrows and goes steadily on—
“Oh, are you really hit at last, Ivie? I wasn’t aware—that will make things go all the better. As I was saying, there’s Lettice Tremarten. Not bad-looking.”
“Not bad-looking!” growls the captain. “Why, she’s heavenly!”
Lilla resumes—
“I’m not a man, Ivie, to rave over a milk-and-water girl of eighteen. I repeat, she’s not bad-looking, although she has been brought up in a very absurd manner in a sweetly-simple style absolutely ridiculous in these days. However, perhaps her bringing up may turn out to be rather an advantage to you than otherwise, as she will find it all the more difficult to realise the nature and extent of your sins against society.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lilla, don’t wind about in that way!” ejaculates the captain. “Come to the point at once and be done with it, and let my sins alone.”
“If you intend to be rude, Ivie, you had better leave the room. I really have no interest in the matter beyond getting you off my hands. The first heiress you succeed in catching I shall hail as an angel of deliverance, and shall be kind and attentive to in the extreme. Why you should fly into one of your tempers whenever Miss Tremarten’s name is mentioned is a mystery to me. Those old-maid aunts of hers have no one else to leave their money to. Her father, judging from his tastes and habits, cannot be a poor man. Altogether, I should say she must eventually come into some twenty-five or thirty thousand a year. If you can manage the affair yourself by all means do so; but you know, as a rule, you make a mess of nearly everything you put your fingers into.”
Captain Ivie draws a long breath.
“Lilla, what a fool you are not to let a man smoke in your room! A puff would stand for a whole volley.”
“Thanks,” says Lilla sweetly, “I don’t admire the habit. I was saying, if you think you can manage this little affair by yourself by all means do so, but it you want my assistance I am quite willing to take the unpleasant part off your hands.”
“If they
